Chocolate Peanut Cookies

This is a Paul Hollywood (aka legendary, fit "Master Baker" from the Great British Bake-Off) recipe from his new book "How to Bake". Despite me avowing to make some of his wonderful bread-based recipes (not just bread, there's danish pastries, scones, crumpets... all manner of wonderful carb-based delights) from the book, I found the simplest thing I could to knock-up to cheer up my Monday evening.

These chocolate peanut cookies have raisins in the original recipe, but that sounded far too healthy for me, so I just went with 2 of my favourite things: nuts and chocolate. The recipe also states you should bake the biscuits for 15 minutes, but the first batch I made were cremated into a treacly death with this amount of oven-based action, so I reduced the time to around 9 minutes. This gave a soft, crumbly texture, a bit like a brownie, which we really enjoyed. The crunch of the peanuts was a nice contrast and I had to hide them in an airtight container to ensure my tasting companion didn't devour the lot in one go!

Ingredients:
200g dark chocolate, chopped
60g unsalted butter
1 tbsp golden syrup
170g caster sugar
1.5 tsp vanilla extract
200g peanuts, toasted and chopped
40g plain flour
2 tbsp cocoa powder

Method:
1. Heat oven to 170C. Lightly butter a baking tray
2. Put 80g of the chocolate in a heatproof bowl with the butter, sugar, golden syrup and vanilla extract. Set over a bowl of simmering water and heat gently, stirring occasionally. until the mixture is melted and smooth.
3. Mix the remaining chopped chocolate with the peanuts in another bowl. Sift the flour and cocoa together and stir everything together.
4. Place tablespoon-sized balls of the mixture on the baking tray, squeezing them together a little to form balls, and space evenly apart so they have room to spread.
5. Bake for 8-10 minutes. They will be soft when you remove them from the oven-keeo an eye on them so they don't burn at the edges. Leave on the baking tray until they have hardened a little, then place them on a wire track to cool completely. 

Boozy Coffee & Walnut Cake

Feeling a bit bleak this drizzly, dull January? What you need is this boozy, nutty cake, with a kick of caffeine to lift the spirits. It's super-simple to make and the finish is really nice-a good, light sponge, crunchy toasted walnuts and a warming slug of kahlua. If you have Tia Maria, stick that in, you'll get a more coffee-y finish, but I was economising, because - after all - it is January. 

Ingredients:
200g caster sugar
200g softened butter
4 eggs, beaten
200g self-raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
50g walnuts, chopped
2 heaped tbsp instant coffee , dissolved in 1 tbsp boiling water
500g pot mascarpone
85g light muscovado sugar
4 tbsp liquor (preferably Tia Maria or Kahlua)

Method:
1. Heat oven to 190C/fan 170C/gas 5. Butter two 20cm sandwich tins and line with non-stick baking paper.
2. Toast the walnuts in the oven for 10 mins and set aside to cool.
3. In a large bowl, beat all the cake ingredients together until you have a smooth, soft batter.
4. Dissolve the instant coffee in 1 tbsp of boiling water, cool and add to the cake mix.
5. Divide the mixture between the 2 tins, smooth the surface with a spatula or the back of a spoon, then bake for about 20 mins until golden and the cake springs back when pressed. Turn onto a cooling rack and leave to cool completely.
6. For the filling, beat the mascarpone with the light muscovado sugar and your choice of liquor until smooth. 

7. Sandwich the cooled cakes with a third of the filling and a third of the walnuts.
8. Cover the top and sides of the cake with the rest of the filling and decorate the top with the remaining toasted walnuts.

Hush Brasserie

Jasmine ice tea with strawberry & elderflower

Hush Brasserie is one of those places I really want to be outstanding, not least because it's really close to where I work, but also because it has the potential to be great. It's just not quite there yet. Formerly the French Kitchen, Hush is part of the Sweet Potato group, who own such delights as Villandry, Sake No Hanna and the brilliant Cabana (and I say that as a non-meat eater. It's a churrascaria really, so for me to rate it they must be doing something right). I'm unsure as to where Hush fits into this, other than as a french-style bistro trying to be all things to all people. Albeit mainly tourists around Holborn and hungry office workers. Since I fall into the latter, and since they market themselves as a "business lunch" venue, I'd query why the staff seem unable to get it together. Both times I've visited they've have kept my party waiting to order and the service has been patchy to say the least. The food is reasonable, although maybe a bit overpriced for what it is, so choose carefully.

Dressed dorset crab with avocado & toasted sourdough

Whole globe artichoke & hazelnut vinaigrette

The drinks we started with were delicious. I went for the jasmine ice tea and my companion tried a white wine and strawberry concoction which was delicious. She started with the crab and avocado which I think was probably the stand out dish for me. It's a hearty portion, served with sourdough (and who doesn't like sourdough?) The crab was light and well-dressed with tasty mayo, on lots of smooth avo. Yum. I went for the artichoke because it's a fairly rare sight on an British menu, and the hazelnut butter sounded delish.  I'm a big fan of nuts. The artichoke was a bit past-its-best really, but there was enough of it to make a decent starter. I just can't understand why restaurants serve dishes like this unless the ingredients are really fresh and look good. But anyway, in comparison with the main course it was a winner.

Spaghetti with tiger prawns, chilli & garlic

Spaghetti with tiger prawns. What could go wrong? A staple in faux Italian chain restaurants, I thought this would be pretty good. Wrong. I left the majority of it and the waitress did question why, which surprised me given that it was a portion of pasta large enough for two, but stuck together in a clump and dumped onto a plate. The prawns were fine, but they were definitely added as an afterthought. Seemingly, so too was the seasoning and the chilli and garlic. I like tasty food, but apparently the chef doesn't.

Crispy duck salad with honey & mustard dressing

My companion's main of crispy duck salad with a side of fries was infinitely better-or she's far less fussy than me. Probably a bit of both, but I have had the fries at Hush before and they are good. The lobster roll I had them with on my initial visit, whilst nowhere near anything you'd get in the States, was not a bad effort. The side of butternut squash with pine nuts and raisins was nice, very autumnal and perfect to have when the rain is pouring down outside, as it was when we dined.

Roasted butternut squash with pine nuts and raisins

The desserts at Hush are good, the Mars bar cheesecake with praline ice cream is delicious and I will race you for it. Even though we weren't particularly hungry, we decided to share the other amazing-sounding Honeycomb ice-cream with hot chocolate sauce. After waiting with our dessert menus for over 10 minutes we were disappointed to be informed that this wasn't available. I'm not sure why we weren't told this when we were given the menus, but this is the issue with the wait-staff at Hush. Nice they are, but there is just something... missing.

Union Jacks

So it's Christmas, and Christmas is about one thing, right? And that one thing is eating. Well, and drinking, but in  this case let's focus on the eating element and pretend I was very well behaved around wine in December...

So, on the day enough Krispy Kreme's to feed a small army arrived in my office (don't ask) we decided to have an impromptu team xmas lunch at Union Jacks. After a breakfast of doughnuts, it would be the obvious thing to do. And this was when the existence of Jamie Oliver's newest (?) collaboration came to my knowledge. Jamie loves a collaboration, and this time he's gone in with someone I'd never heard of before, an American called Chris Bianco. Well, Chris obviously knows his pizzas, because this chilli-topped beast was a good one.

Anyone who knows me well will know I am a chilli freak, I love it hot, and I will put chilli sauce (or preferably jalepenos) on just about anything (savoury). Jamie and Chris have kindly names this pizza after me (the "Chilli Freak") and topped it with (supposedly)  different types of chilli. Although I only really saw one. But it tasted good and that's the main thing. If anything, for me it could have been a little hotter, and I had twice the amount of chilli's on mine as my neighbour did on hers. The pizza comes with a side of curd, a runny, yoghurty concoction which presumably you need to cool it down if you can't handle your heat. Needless to say, I left this well alone, but my colleagues told me it was tasty. You can pimp your pizza with slightly exotic foodie choices including oxtail and shoulder of pork, should you so wish, but I'd like to see a few more exiting topping options on the menu-maybe some grilled artichokes, olives, egg...

If you don't fancy a pizza, Union Jacks does lots of tapas-style plates too, which I'll try upon my return. The marathon bar ice cream sounded deliciously retro, and as I'm old enough to remember the traumatic (I still weep gently now every time I have to use the word "snickers") transition, I'll definitely be giving that a taste-test when I'm back in the Covent Garden area and feeling hungry.

Union Jacks has a distinctly Jamie feel to it, and is all exposed brickwork and piping, a bit "too cool for school." It's a bit overpriced for what it is, but it's not bad. Just don't expect anything too gourmet and you won't be too disappointed.